Advantages

Disadvantages

Expensive, big, retro, poor value for money.

Classic retro-styleFour slice toaster than can be set to twoVariable browning controlVariable width bread slots Self-centering system for even toasting Frozen bread setting Hi-rise facilityReheat button

Mine: Four Slice in a buttermilk colour with chrome finishings to knobs and controls

My thoughts:

Nice looking, although quite big. Knobs are a bit fidly and chrome coming off already where its been cleaned thoroughly following a butter spill, after just 3 weeks. Browning control needs to be adjusted often and definately depending on bread used, ie change between loaves, types of bread, which can be irritating in the morning rush, it seems slow to toast to a nice brown colour as well and I end up popping up early to get going on week days. Crumb tray easy to empty, but not so easy to put back in again! Variable width is useful and it will do wider slices than my old/other toaster.

If you want a stylish item for your kitchen go ahead, I'm not convinced, I think an item half of the price would do the same job just as well though and shop around could find something smaller and just as visually pleasing?! However, it is attractive, produces very nice toast when you set it up carefully and have plenty of time.

Negatives are:

Expensive, big, poor value for money.I have found this toaster extremely disappointing.

Pluses: Attractive, retro statement piece. Depends what you want for your kitchen? if you just want to look at your toaster and dust it, this is great. If you want to use it in the morning rush and actually clean it, not so.

Price & Availability:

I paid £129.00 for the toaster and kettle combination from Littlewoods. Also available individually and from Amazon, John Lewis, Argos and other similar stores.

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

A highly attractive and useful kitchen appliance

It was just before Christmas when our trusty Morphy Richards toaster decided to give up the ghost. Quite unexpectedly and without reason the levers stopped clicking down into place and so we were left rather unappreciatively with an attractive looking toaster which failed to actually toast. Although in our household we do not eat a huge amount of toast, our toaster was still useful for those odd days when the frozen bread required warming through or on those long Sunday afternoons when crumpets with butter were needed, and therefore we begrudgingly threw out our old toaster and went on the hunt for a new and improved model.

Our kitchen, though compact in size, does look better and more 'lived' in when a few appliances dot the kitchen work surfaces and therefore we were after a toaster which fitted our colour scheme and looked at home next to our other appliances. Cream was the order of the day to fit in with our neutral palette. After doing the rounds on a variety of toasters and umming and aahing over the more expensive Dualit appliances, our eyes settled on the De'Longhi CTO4E Classic toaster and we immediately fell in love with this retro looking appliance. Being one to generally put looks over performance it was a win-win for me and so we bought this toaster home with us to fill the now empty corner space left behind by our older model.

~The Product~

This product is a 4 slice toaster which is matt cream in colour and features chrome coloured accessories which work together to give this appliance a retro look. The body of the toaster is metal in construction and yet rather than having a smooth finish the body is slightly textured giving it a rough feel when touched. Either side of the toaster the De'Longhi logo is stuck in silver text giving it a quality look. On the front of the toaster body are the levers with which to push bread down into the body of the toaster and these, although chrome in colour, are made out of plastic and feel slightly flimsy to the touch. The overall effect does somewhat cheapen the overall look of the toaster in my opinion.

Six chrome buttons on the front of the toaster serve as functions with which to 'defrost', 'stop/cancel' and 'reheat' the bread inside and these are accompanied with four LED indicator lights which glow orange when on. Finally and my favourite feature of this toaster model is the two round silver knobs on the front of the toaster which allow the heat settings on either side of the toaster to be independently set by simply turning the knobs clockwise to increase the temperature. These knobs are the 'brown' settings for the bread and therefore allow the user to cook the bread for as long or as little as they prefer.

Along with having an attractive look this toaster also features a number of practical features and these include the following:-

* Two slide out crumb trays to make the toaster easy to clean.* Non slip feet.* Self centring slots for an even toast.* The ability to high rise the toasted bread making it easy to remove from the toaster.

~Setting up and Use~

As with many appliances, this toaster comes presented in a rectangular cardboard box which when opened houses the toaster sandwiched between polystyrene with which to protect the body of the appliance. Once I had taken all the packaging off the toaster it was helpful to me that everything was ready to go, with the exception of the electric plug which was neatly wrapped up and secured with a cable tie. In addition the plug of the toaster was housed in a plastic sheath which simply required removing prior to plugging in at the mains. This toaster fitted neatly into the small corner of my kitchen where it would be 'housed' and the cable was short enough that any additional length could be neatly wrapped underneath the body of the toaster thereby making it invisible from above.

Relishing the idea of toast after a week without the option to have any, my partner and I eagerly slotted four pieces of bread into the toaster to see how it would perform. This action was, in itself, easy to do by simply turning the knob to the desired 'brownness', slotting two slices of bread on either side of the toaster and pushing the silver lever down on either side to toast the bread. The orange indicator lights glowed on either side of the machine to show that the toaster was on, and then within a matter of minutes a quiet click indicated that the toast had completed cooking. To get the toast out, we simply pushed the levers up as far as they would go preventing us from getting burnt fingers by reaching down into the body of the machine.

As I like my toast slightly browned and my husband likes it very brown it was helpful being able to select our preferred toast 'style'. We were not disappointed with the results either, my toast having been set midway in the scale came out an anaemic shade of brown whilst my husbands whilst taking slightly longer to cook on the top end of the scale, came out an even medium brown colour on either side of the toast.

We have since used our toaster for defrosting bread and cooking crumpets and haven't been disappointed. However the crumpets do require cooking on the hottest setting should you like, as I do, the crumpets to come out slightly browned and hot enough to make the butter melt into them. My only criticism in using this product is the lever action, which although raises a standard size piece of bread high enough to avoid burnt fingers, does not work with smaller items such as crumpets. It would have therefore been helpful to have a couple of grills or something similar to slot on the top of the toaster for this purpose.

~Cleaning~

Being cream in colour, this toaster does have a tendency to attract brown crumbs and therefore looks dirty more quickly than a darker shade would. I therefore resort to wiping down the body of my machine around once a week. What should be a very easy procedure is made more difficult by the fact that the body is slightly textured in feel, thereby making any bits of fluff or dust cling to the body of the toaster in an infuriating manner. This aside the crumb trays work well at being able to clean out the insides of the toaster by simply clicking open, throwing the contents in the bin and re-slotting.

~Price and Availability~

We bought our toaster just before Christmas form our local Homebase store and paid £59.99 for it. A quick look online reveals that it can currently be bought from a number of retailers including Amazon for as little as £49.78 and Argos for £69.99 therefore making it worthwhile shopping around in my opinion. Although slightly expensive, I do think that the look and sturdy feel of this toaster more than justifies the initial cost.

~My Summary~

In my experience, this is a good quality toaster which delivers evenly cooked toast every time. I love the look of this toaster with the chrome accessories and subtle details, the browning options and the way in which either side of the toaster can be operated independently. I dislike the cheap feel to the front levers on the toaster and the way in which the rough texture makes dust cling to the body of the machine. As a consequence, this toaster scores a very good four stars from me.

I would recommend this toaster and will continue to enjoy looking at and using mine as it sits in the corner of my kitchen.

I hope this review has been of some assistance and thanks for reading! x

Comments

Advantages

Reliability

Disadvantages

You simply cannot beat this toaster.

The DeLonghi CT04E Toaster is one beautiful piece of machinery. Happily being toast, sorry, host, to four pieces of bread, it really does a great job of toasting all breaded goods. Crumpets, baps, scones, even pop tarts are toasted to perfection with this great bit of kit. Everything seems to come out crispy, and the dials to operate the time and level are really intuitive, if a little bit hard to see. (Old folk may have trouble with this.)

The style is a kind of 1950s retro chrome throwback. The kind of thing you'd see in old stylish American diners. This is really charming and the colour goes very well with most kitchens and pantries. The dials looks really stylish and retro, and although the whole thing is incredibly adjustable, all of the displays and dials and bells and whistles that has on it are not nearly as intimidating as they look. No, it has a very intuitive interface.

This is very much a toaster suitable for a family household, since it's a very in-depth experience to use, with its 1-6 control of how brown you want the toast, and more than adequate defrost setting, and of course, who could forget that there are four different slots for the bread. This is ideal for when you have company or if, as I say, you just have a big family.

But the best thing about this device has to be the fact that all of the slots can be used independently of one another, so you can make all kinds of things at the same time to suit everybody's individual tastes, which is bound to impress family and friends. I've found it works particularly well with making Birds Eye Waffles and Pop Tarts, which you can even make simulatenously. This is a real extravagance in my opinion.

The only real problem I have with this toaster is that it's very long, and doesn't fit well on certain counters because it simply takes up far too much space, so it probably wouldn't be suitable in small flats or kitchens, but the style, colour and overall theme matches a lot of recently released electrical goods, and that's always a good thing.

The crumb tray pulls out quite easily and is simple to brush out. I've had this toaster for some time now and it always crisps everything perfectly and never gets too full of crumbs or other nastiness, despite the fact that I'm constantly using it to make pop-tarts.

All in all this is a great toaster, perfect in every way, quite, stylish and very reliable with lots of different applications, apart from its somewhat broad dimension which may render it unsuitable for certain kitchens, and small fonts on the dials which older people or visually impaired people may struggle with.

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

great overall, great with the matching toaster too

my girlfriend and i recently bought this toaster as part of a set for our kitchen, we had decorated the kitchen and wanted appliances to match. this set was what we found and even though a little on the pricey side i wouldn't go back now. the sheer ease of use and the fact that i have yet to find a slice of bread that wont fit into the slots.

This toaster looks great, i think i has a classic look to it which i and my girlfriend love, the dials on the front are really retro and again make for something good to look at. it is very easy to clean, the matt finish ensures this. we have not yet had to clean the crumb trays but i'm sure that will be just as easy.

I would say there are a couple of faults with this though, the small buttons on the front were at first quite hard to read an i kept hitting the wrong ones, the only other flaw i've found so far is when toasting the cream case actually gets quite hot on top.

aside from the two things i mentioned above this product is well worth the money.

update - noticed from a comment about the review that inever actually mentioned the toasting quality!!! silly me thinking about how much i just love the toaster.

so for toasting...... turn this thing up full and you'll get yourself a beautifully crispy piece of toast, also great for the kids, had my niece over the other day and when applied to the correct setting (which is easy thanks to the dials) a slightly brown soft slice of toast emerged, like i say great. we use thi sin our house for potato waffles too, they have to go in twice but thats a given with most toasters. better now as we can make waffles for the pair of us at once

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

I wouldn't put anyone of buying it but certain aspects might annoy some people

The DeLonghi CT04E cream coloured toaster is certainly pleasing on the eye. At first glance you could be forgiven for mistaking it for an old style radio with its retro dials, basic buttons and all round classical appearance. With an aesthetical appeal such as this it would sit comfortably in the majority of kitchens regardless of their design.

Features

The toaster features 4 variable width slots operated by the 2 sliders on the front (2 slots each) which feature an extra lift facility to assist the removal of smaller sized items such as crumpets and muffins. The 2 slots can be used simultaneously or randomly.

There are 2 browning dials that independently control 2 slots each. The dials have a 1-6 scale, '1' being lightly done to '6' being well done.

Also on the front are stop/cancel, reheat and defrost buttons - with light indicators above the reheat and defrost options.

The toaster has 2 crumb trays which slide outwardly on each side.

There are 4 non slip feet to hold it securely in place.

Dimensions (approximately) 12" deep x 8" high x 10 1/2" wide

Performance

On the whole it does give you a decent piece of toast though there are a couple of flaws that hinder it. The extra lift facility on the sliders is ok for slightly smaller pieces of bread but for crumpets it is pretty ineffective. You do find yourself flicking the slider up sharply to propel it upwards so the very top arc just pokes out of the top and even then you still have to try and catch it in the split second you get. This is ok if you have the reflexes of Bruce Lee but for us mere mortals it can be quite a problem and just a touch annoying as the crumpet gets colder but oddly more tasty looking the longer you bounce it about inside.

If you like your toast burnt to a crisp then your best bet is to put a thick piece in on the highest level (6) as thinner slices only seem to get just a bit brown on this setting and can come out quite hard and crispy.

The one other minor flaw - and it is only minor - is that the browning dials are incredibly sensitive to the touch so when you let go just check you haven't moved it back a notch. These dials aren't hangover friendly and if you're particularly shaky first thing in the morning it can be quite an ordeal.

It is easy to clean and scrubs up well, a cool wall facility would have been a welcome addition but overall I'm glad I bought this, more for looks, granted, but it still does a decent enough job.

Price - I paid just over £50 pounds when I got this new a year or so ago, but you can pick them up for about £40 now if you look in the right places.

Comments

Advantages

Reliability

Disadvantages

If this is the look you are after, it's worth it!

This toaster delivers in looks and performance but loses out in the practicality stakes somewhat. The cream finish is matt and easy to clean, it doesn't stain and tarnish like some stainless steel toasters can. The only slight problem with cleaning is the 6 small silver buttons on the front, they do become marked with fingerprints and crumbs tend to stick around them. The crumb tray makes it easy to clean the toaster out. It toasts evenly, and is well capable of taking thicker slices of bred/crumpets/pitta etc. I have experienced a few problems with the browning controls, ie the two larger silver knobs. They are fairly easy to turn accidentally when cleaning the work surface etc, so it's easy to turn the browning to maximum and get a surprise when you next use the toaster! The retro styling is fantastic, it has been mistaken for a radio in my kitchen! Very solid and looks far more expensive than it's thirty something price tag. It's style far outweighs any minor issues with practicality. Great toaster.

Comments

Advantages

Reliability

Disadvantages

Well worth the money

I have bought so many cheap toasters in the past that have barely lasted five minutes before they stop working, so when my last one gave up the ghost, I thought that I would treat myself to one that was a bit more expensive and would look good. After much deliberation over colour and style, I eventually plumped for this Delonghi four slice toaster.

I have had this toaster for a while now, and I absolutely love it. I was concerned that it was going to be a bit bulky, but it looks great in my kitchen (matching the kettle and my decor) and takes pride of place on the worktop. Because of the cream colour, it blends in with the walls, and doesn't stick out like a sore thumb, to be honest, even if it didn't toast well, (but it does) I'd still keep it because it looks so good!

It has four slots, two each on different settings on a retro style dial from 1-6. It browns bread quickly and evenly on both sides, the only exception so far being Warburtons Toastie bread which is too tall so has a white strip at the top (does anyone have a toaster that this bread does fit into?!)I find that if I do muffins, crumpets or bagels , I really have to flick them out and catch them on the way up, as just pushing the lever up doesn't lift them far enough.

This toaster knows if you put frozen bread into it, and so adjuts its own settings so you always end up with what you want - clever little thing!Other functions include a cancel button, independant crumb trays and a reheat button. It also has a defrost button, but I have found that it starts to toast so prefer to use the microwave.

This toaster has taken quite a battering from my busy and hungry family, but it still works as well as on the first day, and cleans up nicely every time. It was a bit pricey, at just under £50, but hopefully it will last a long time, and I consider it money well spent!

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

Great stylish and great performance

I had hankered after this DeLonghi 4 slice toaster for years, but couldn't justify tossing out my old (less than trendy one) until recently when it gave up the ghost!

I bought the new DeLonghi from Argos, with the matching kettle and they have pride of place on my worktop !

I went for the cream version so that its nice and neutral if I change my decor.

Apart from its obvious good looks, it does what it says on the tin - ie - makes superb toast.......... 4 slices at a time when my boyfriend stays over !

I use it for toasting bread but I also us it for rolls, waffles and hot cross buns. Two of the best things about this one are that it defrosts and the big winner for me is that it has 2 adjustable dials so while I like mine done medium /rare; he like it verging on the burnt side - no more breakfast argument - hurrah!

Comments

Advantages

Reliability

Disadvantages

Not cheap but does what it says it will do and does it well IMHO

I have had this toaster for a while now buying it specifically to match my kitchen. I liked the look of it and thought the idea of being able to operate just 2 slots at one time and have different heat settings a rather cool idea.

Specifications

- Finished in Matt Silver- Non slip rubber feet- Removable crumb trays- Both slots operate independently from each other and each slot has it's own set of controls and browning settings- Stop and Cancel buttons- Defrost and reheat buttons- The slots self centre the bread for even toasting along with the slots being variable widths- High Rise facility (additional 20mm lift)

So what did I think of it?

Well I have certainly put this toaster through it's paces. I have toasted Naan Bread, English Muffins, Pitta Bread, Bread and Tea Cakes in it. All are of varying width and length. You can just get a normal sized pitta bread in lengthways but if you're trying to toast larger than Mini Naan Bread then it just won't fit.

When I got my new toaster home I set it up on the worktop and removed the cardboard from inside the slots. I plugged it in and there I was, ready to go. Eager to see what it could do the first thing I got out was some frozen bread. 2 minutes on the defrost setting is all that is required for this and it defrosts lovely and then you can go on to toast your bread.

The controls are nicely spaced out so that you know which control is for which set of slots. For the browning setting there is a dial (bit like a radio dial) with settings 0 - 6. If you are just toasting the bread then you do not need to bother with any other buttons. Just choose the depth of colour you would like with the radio button and push down the lever for the slots and bob's your uncle so to speak.

If you want to defrost or reheat then press the button after setting the radio dial to the length of time required. Then depress the lever and it'll do exactly as you've asked. Once the function is complete then the toast will 'pop up' to indicate done.

I find the high rise facility excellent as sometimes you can't get stuff out of the toaster without risking life and limb so the levers also 'push up' so effectively you can push your toast out of the toaster to be able to remove it easier.

The result is fresh, evenly toasted, crisp toast or bread. It really is excellent.

Cleaning

The finish of the product is matt grey and when it said that fingerprints would not show up, I thought 'Yeah yeah, righto!' but how right they were. It's easy to wipe clean and if crumbs get on the top of the toaster I usually wipe them into the toaster because of the crumb trays at the bottom. Before removing the trays I will tap gently on either side of the toaster to remove any crumbs that have caught on the slot lip enroute to the crumb tray.

These are an ingenious idea. The idea is that the tray fix in either side of the toaster. They have lips that you grab hold of and slide the trays out from underneath the toaster. I usually bin the crumbs and then wash the trays in warm soapy water and then just slide back in until I feel them click back into place. And that's it, your toaster completely clean!

Stockists and Prices

I got mine from Argos at £49.95 but it's now a few pence cheaper. www.argos.co.uk.